Or Let Her Walk Away
by treeflamingo
Summary: She's walking away from him, and he's looking for an excuse:  to stop her, or to let her go.  A quick ONE SHOT written in the aftermath of chap 171.


**A/N: **Just a quick one-shot written after reading chap 171, and bouncing off of the prompt "Marks left by the tape you used to put photos up on my wall."

For any of you who may be waiting for updates to Half The Secret, I promise I haven't forgotten about it. I am, in fact, working on it. I've been writing chapters out of order, changing my mind about what will happen, and generally drowning in a well of my own digging, but I _am_ working on it. I will have that story and what's left of The Music Never Skips a Beat finished by the end of March, and then I will be taking a hiatus from fic to work on an original piece. I don't have the time or dedication to write both at the simultaneously :[ But anyway, if anybody would like to see Secret update sooner, you could help me out by PMing me a question/concern/idea you're waiting for me to address. I'm sort of losing direction on that story :\

Standard disclaimer (which I should probably use now and then): I own nothing.

* * *

**Or Let Her Walk Away**

It wasn't the same after that. She looked so beautiful that night, but she wouldn't let go of Kijima's arm. As though he were her most important accessory and she would be naked without him. Ren got the distinct impression that she was hiding next to him, in plain view but protected. The thing she wanted protection from was Ren. He could feel it.

It made him want to scream.

All he had done was accept her offered comfort. She held out to him the source of her courage and he'd grasped it with both hands. (He was ignoring the fact that it had been a strange and forward request from him that brought her to his house at all; she'd called first anyway.) How did that make a villain of him? (What he was not ignoring, because he did not know, was that his crimes against her heart were much older than that, that this had been a long time coming.)

Days stretched to weeks and it became obvious that she was avoiding him. Obvious in harshly glaring ways that very few people noticed. She interacted with him normally as Setsu – as intrusive and trusting and handsy as always – but when they were not in character she was strictly professional. She treated him with her patented (pain-in-the-) graceful deference when they met in the hall – but she abandoned her usual haunts, all the places he knew to find her. She didn't ask him for any assistance, and didn't question him about his roles.

She was walking away from him, and he had no idea how to stop her.

Yashiro was beside himself. "What. Do. You. Mean. _You don't know how to stop her?_ Are you or are you not a man? Let's drop the fact that you're the Number One Bachelor, the perfect image of a gentleman and cavalier, and pretty much the single most desired man in the entire _country, _and focus on the fact that you're a _man_ and she's a _girl_. You _catch_ her when she's alone, you _take_ her slim little body in your arms, and you _kiss_ her! Even if she's Kyoko-chan, she's still a woman! This may be your last chance to break down the wall of ice around her heart! Power through it with the heat of your love, Ren!"

"Yashiro-san," Ren had responded. "That is possibly the stupidest thing you have ever suggested I do."

And it was. And Yashiro probably knew it, because he didn't mention it again. But let it never be said that Yashiro Yukihito was a man who did not connect with his clients; he was about as desperate as Ren was, and if it were him he probably would have made exactly the epic blunder he was recommending to Ren.

Instead, Ren opted for a different epic blunder. He resolved to let her walk away. As the weeks swelled into a month, he stopped even looking for her. Lory eyed him with a marked air of disgust, but Ren withstood it like the iron curtain of a man he was. He had never expected to win his suit anyway.

But he still missed her. No amount of telling himself that he didn't deserve her stopped her absence from wearing away at him. No amount of overwork, quick conbini meals and powerful nightcaps made the panicky little sense of desperation disappear from his gut.

That was how he found himself one evening lurking like a coward in his own guest room. She used to stay there occasionally…

He was startled to notice a certain odd texture on the top of the empty dresser. Two little strips of sticky ran from the front edge to about half an inch in. Time had collected atop them and stayed there, darkening the bright varnished wood by just a smudge; the cleaning lady only ran a quick duster over the room, as he had instructed – _Nobody stays in there anyway_ – and she had apparently never noticed it.

A smile quirked at his lips.

"What could she have taped up there?"

His heart began to beat a little faster – _calm down, fool, this is probably ages old by now_ – and his curiosity ramped up with it.

Despite himself, he let his smile broaden.

Then, with a quick movement, the way a boy jumps suddenly into a pool that he is quite sure is _freezing _cold, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed her number.

* * *

**PS:** My apologies, a number of people have asked so obviously I didn't make it clear enough in the story (and I'm too lazy to go fix it with some good old-fashioned narration). What Ren found were the left-over skid marks from when you rip tape off of something but the stickiness doesn't completely go away. And then dirt and whatnot collects on the stickiness. And in the end you have to get a freakin' Brillo pad to scrub all the old sticky off. Sorry for being obscure. *pekori*


End file.
